Cristiane Busato Smith, MIT Global Shakespeares’ Lead Regional Editor for Brazil, had a conversation with visual artist Lucia Castanho about her work on Ophelia. Castanho discusses how the Shakespearean character became the theme of her poignant images.
Cristiane: Why Ophelia? How did the desire to portray Ophelia come about? What potentials do you see in Ophelia as a) the Shakespearean character, and b) as the object of the longstanding and prolific representational history she has received? Did you try to “swim” against the current of the objectifying tradition that Ophelia received in the visual arts?
Lucia: Before starting my PhD, I was working on a series of photographs with the theme of melancholy. The female figure has been a reference for my work since I started drawing in Art School. As a woman artist, I want to address issues that need to be exposed, even if they are not personal. Millais’ Ophelia, one of the few Ophelias represented dead in the visual arts, has intrigued me since the beginning. I kept that image in my mind for many years, but I couldn’t see the beauty of a dead woman, in an equally beautiful setting, as the object of my work. A little before starting my doctorate, I came across a book on contemporary photography and saw a photo by Tom Hunter of a young woman wearing a dark dress floating in a lake. She was surrounded by flowers. This image brought Millais’ painting back. The difference is that Hunter was depicting the subject in photography, instead of painting. This provided me with new ideas for the photos I was already taking. In my Melancholia photos, I dressed as Ophelia and wore a wire corsage underneath my dresses, which highlighted female pain and sufferance. There was a connection with the previous series.
The images of Ophelia that I represented in the photographs then, and still do, only differed from those of the 19th century because they are made by a woman. Back then, the male desire to depict dead and insane women was definitely a means of silencing her. Today, even after the feminist revolution that took place in the 20th century, we still haven’t figured out our place. It’s as if we’ve validated the 19th century male gaze. Seeing so many girls photographing themselves dead in bathtubs makes us wonder why, what idea of death is this that returns in this century and that, in a curious way, it is now women who put themselves in this situation.
CRISTIANE: What do you want to express to the viewer? The question of self-representation is so important for the female artist, isn’t it? Is the personal the political?
LUCIA: I believe that making art is making politics, I feel like it’s a struggle all the time. Women’s place in society is always being questioned. While we keep moving forward, our place is being usurped. Female suicide does not happen literally, but through small daily deaths, in families, in interactions, at work, etc.
CRISTIANE: Can you comment on some of your pictures, maybe on one in more detail? Madness, repression, and suicide are implicit in the character’s story. Is there a sublimation of this repression? Do your Ophelias survive? Do some succumb?
LUCIA: There is a photograph in my first series which depicts Ophelia’s feet (fig 1). It is now part of the Sorocaba MACS collection. That photograph makes me think of the importance of water for my work. In Bachelard’s words, water is the element of the death of young and beautiful women. Even if there is nothing more than the feet in the water, there is no question for the observer that he is looking at a dead woman. The composition, the color, the way the feet are positioned, as well as the perspective, capture the viewer’s eye.
During my doctorate, I took many photos: I made drawings on paper, objects, dresses and props, as well as ten sketchbooks and collages. In the drawings, at that moment, I often wrote the phrase: “Ofélia, não morra”(Ophelia, do not die). It was a very personal request. But we survived, me as an artist and as a woman. This image was and still is an important reference for my work. It’s been ten years since the last exhibition at the museum and what’s left are the traces of the female figure, the pools (figs 2 and 3) where the body moves and the memories I keep of the crossing over the sea.
I also continue to make necklaces and photo performances which talk about silence. During my post-doctoral work, in 2019, I was exposed to glass techniques in Portugal, and I made a series of sculptures for this purpose.
CRISTIANE: Can you talk a bit about your style, techniques, and aesthetic language?
LUCIA: During the entire process of making the images there were many changes. The creation process goes like that: I have an idea that unfolds, then changes occur. I started representing Ophelia wearing contemporary clothes and, in the end, after two years, Millais’ influence appeared in terms of settings, flowers, and so on. There are many series within the same series, that’s how it happened. I started to highlight details such as her feet, her hands crossed on her chest, her body lying on the ground, floating in the pool, or lying dead on a dusty floor.
After my doctoral defense came what I call the “colar para calar” (silence necklaces) series (figs. 4, 5, 6, 7). https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0ZaHpu7iwJ8 It only dawned on me later that the necklaces represented Ophelia’s drowning. During the pandemic, and after many images and photographs, other ways of representing the necklaces emerged during the creation process. Copper, silver and fabric flower necklaces and others.
Today, after so many years of production, it dawned on me that I frequently use transparent materials or ways in order to create transparency in my work. There are fabrics, papers, watery paints, mirrors, glass, fine copper, and silver lines that build floating forms. My intention is to suggest the experience of floating, of crossing, of diving in Ophelia’s water.
Figs. 4, 5, 6, and 7 [untitled]
CRISTIANE: Do you see a progression, a “development”, in your Ophelia series?
LUCIA: In the beginning, my intention was to research and create contemporary Ophelias. I looked for clothes, wigs, shoes, and settings that that situated Ophelia in our historical moment. I felt it would be limiting just to represent her dead in the water, even though the photographs were taken in different places such as pools, lakes, the sea, among other places. This is what led me to do extensive research on the subject, and it felt like I was rewriting the character’s story at all times. I remember reading in your doctoral dissertation about the clothes created by the actresses who played Ophelias in the past as a way to give greater importance to the character through her costumes. And so, as I said before, I started to accentuate her feet, her hands, as well as spotlight different props, more colorful natural flowers which brought more joy to the images I produced.
I also included the heart (fig. 8) and its meaning within her story and also mine. This is when I intuitively progressed within the theme. The necklace, then the pool followed.
Right now, it’s water and memory.
Edgar Allan Poe in his “Philosophy of Composition”, published in 1846, says that the “death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world”. We know that his proposition revealed a Victorian misogynistic wish to suppress women in nineteenth century society. They are beautiful but dead!
And here is also a sentence from Marcia Tiburi which always intrigued me about the Ophelia theme: “The Ophelia Complex would be the prison of one man’s desire or, even more so, the prison of everyone in the patriarchal desire.”
